Dim3nsioneer

Hi Arjen Welcome to the UM forum. This picture shows your problem. As one is looking onto the first layer on this picture, one can see that the lines of the first layer are not closely together and rather round than of rectangular shape. The first layer should be one smooth surface with no gaps between the lines. If you run your finger nail above the surface you should hardly be able feel the lines. So, what to do. Check (again?) the distance between nozzle and bed surface. It should be equal to the thickness of a sheet of paper (80g/m^2). Didier Klein ask an important question. If you have 0.1mm as first layer height, try 0.2mm. This might level out some problems with a non-ideal leveling. If you have 0.3mm, also try 0.2mm; this reduces the flow which is not a bad idea with an UM2. Other reasons could be that the filament flow is lower than it should be. You already measured the thickness of the filament. If you haven't done this about ten times at different spots, please do it. Take the smallest diameter you measure for the setting on your UM2 (you risk some overextrusion, but that's easy to correct). What temperature are you printing the first layer? Try going higher in 5 or 10 degree steps but don't go over 250°C. A higher temperature makes it easier for the feeder motor to push the filament. What speed are you printing the first layer with? Don't go over 20 to 25mm/s for the first layer for the moment. I hope one of these measures solves the adhesion problem. If not, please come back, you will get a lot of other ideas from the community! edit: It's a good idea to watch the printer doing the first layer right. Without a good first layer chances on a good print are minimal... Here is an example of how the lines on the first layer should look (it's actually a brim, but this doesn't matter):

Indeed interesting. Sounds like cross talk or (partial) short cut somewhere. Maybe you can check / answer a few things: - Do you use an original UM shield PCB or a legacy board? - Are the wires of the motor nicely twisted? - Do the motor wires run in parallel with the sensor wires? - Does the effect exist for any motor, i.e. also for x, y and z axis?

Bugfix update for http://wiki.ultimaker.com/CuraPlugin:_TweaktAtZ: Hop on retraction and cool head lift do not trigger TweakAtZ changes anymore in V3.1.2. RetractWhileCombing should be visible now also to users not logged in on the http://wiki.ultimaker.com/Category:CuraPlugin. Thanks to gr5!

It's the layer number in GCODE. btw: I think there is still a discrepancy of the layer numbers in the GUI and the GCODE... :huh: But the GUI will change anyway...

Please try to close and reopen Cura. If that doesn't help, please deactivate the TweakAtZ, close Cura and reopen it and reactivate the plugin... TweakAtZ 3.1.1 does work with Cura 14.03-test2 in general, which of course does not exclude problems with a single installation...but for different reasons.

Sometimes, I really like when I'm wrong... Great news!

If I chop something, then I have more individual pieces afterwards which I can arrange in various ways. Remembering Daid saying he doesn't want Cura to become Slic3r, I doubt that I share Daid's idea of a chopping block...

I found that 200°C for 50mm/s is ok on my UM1 for Colorfabb PLA/PHA. This is a setting which is actually a bit too cool and hardly works (I have to artificially increase the flow). However, if I go above that temperature, I immediately get very strong stringing. I have to mention that my Colorfabb material is from last year; I think the changes the mixtures in the meantime. Personally, I prefer pure PLA without the admixture of PHA.

I recently pushed some modifications to ErikZalm/Marlin which is the main repository for Marlin on Github. If I'm not completely wrong then Daid merges modifications from there to Ultimaker/Marlin which is the source for the UM1 default firmware and to which e.g. illuminarti recently pushed some modifications. If you issue a pull request to one of these two repositories the modification will find its way to the UM1s.

:blink: :shock: :!: B) :cool:

And it's very interesting to see people which called themselves noobs at a time giving very good advice to other people after a few weeks/months! So, prepare yourself being an Ultimaker expert one day...

Your chances not to burn a fan are actually higher if you combine the two identical fans instead of two different types. If you do the latter you might get an unhealthy current oscillation between the two due to the different inductance and resistance.

Absolutely! It's the second best tape you can have. The best is Kapton, but adhesion is a bit smaller (without heating).

"Don't tell me the odds!" :mrgreen: You don't need to test everything at once. You will soon find a reasonable setting for a temperature-velocity match (if you're far off from that, try 50mm/s and 210°C). For the heated bed, maybe start with 60 to 65°C, not higher (as gr5 continues to point out; and he's bloody right about it...) Then maybe find a good setting for a higher speed and a lower speed. And then you're done. And now the most important thing: If you have a new filament which seems not be working with any settings, bring it up here in the forum... :-P About retraction. I can't give you a straight number for a good setting on an UM2 as I have an UM1. But I think there should be some information here in the forum. You may develop your own test procedure with every new filament you try. Someone has started a thread about that a few months ago. Due to the extremely miserable search function of this forum (@UM: any chance we get something better soon?) I cannot find the thread anymore.

I have no idea if you work in science or not, but if you don't, I can tell you that you might be surprised how much trial and error there is in science... With every reasonable filament you buy you get a recommendation for the temperature range it has to be printed in. The lowest temeperature (e.g. 190°C for PLA) usually is for very slow prints such as 10mm/s. The highest temperature (e.g. 220°C) is for the highest speed. With today's printers, including the UM2, reasonable quality can be achieved up to about 100mm/s. That's the basics. The rest is indeed trial and error. You may find that a few degrees higher or lower is better or worse for a specific print. You will find that filaments from different manufacturers, even different colors of the same filament, behave differently in terms of temperature.

At the moment the only truly extruder independent setting in Cura is the temperature setting. This might change - with the new GUI to come - with the introduction of an UM2 dual extruder. Or it might not. Cura is not supposed to offer equally detailed options such as e.g. Slic3r. A plugin could do the job. Please feel free to write one and to share it if you like... :-)

It's for the number freaks... Some people find a number to be more aesthetic if it has less non-zero digits. However, I tried today 0.09mm vs. 0.1mm. I really coulnd't see any difference which could be related to the fact that 0.09mm is exactly 6 full steps of the z motor. 0.09mm was a bit better in quality but I think it's mostly related to the layer thickness itself. A 0.08mm print later on was even better. I do still see some tiny regular pattern in z direction. But I know it is coming from non-contrenticity of the z screw and the coupler.

Then the UM PLA would be PLA/PHA actually? I'm not sure about that. Or did you just mean Colorfabb produces for UM? That's possible (or likely), but I think the material is not the same. The material on my spool of UM PLA silver metallic is rather brittle while the Colorfabb filament I have is rather elastic. However, you can produce filament out of two different base materials and use the same color additives...

It must really be at 70°C as I tested it at 65°C and it neither changed color nor opacity.

Sorry, another bit off-topic question: Is the BfB-flavor on a level where it can and should be tested? I know someone with a BfB printer who is quite annoyed by the discontinued BfB software.

Yes and no. Yes, it would e.g. be a good idea to write down somewhere that the potmeter has to be turned clockwise to increase the current. The Pololu documentation is very bad about this. But there is also a reason not to provide such a simple checklist. I hope nobody will get this wrong. IMHO one has to know what one is doing when exchanging stepper drivers. It's not only a question of the board orientation but also of things like pin compatibility, voltage and signal compatibility (e.g. signal length), pull-up resistors etc. There is e.g. a detailed list on the Pololu page in which details the DRV8825 differs from the A4988 which is already a replacement for the A4983, i.e. the stepper drivers the UM board was originally designed for. I checked this list before ordering. I realised that there ARE differences. However, I found it is not a problem when checking the electronic scheme of the UM shield 1.5.7. So everything is fine? Maybe at the moment. The DRV8825s were introduced end of 2012. The first ones didn't had a pull-up resistor which today's version has. The first ones would not have worked without modification. Pololu can change something in the layout anytime. If that happens, a checklist might become wrong. Concerning the noise produced of the motors driven by the DRV8825s: This morning I had the impression that they were more quiet than the old ones. So it's purely subjective. But they definitively sound different.

@Daid: Is it possible that 14.03-test2 doesn't save a profile string in the gcode? Is that on purpose?

What the ... !?! Are we browsing the same internet? Mine looks like this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15273556/Ultimaker/Pictures/curapluginpagebottom.jpg EDIT: must be a permission issue. 20 plugins are displayed if one is logged in, 13 if not. Maybe illuminarti can help? I think to remember he fixed some other issues on the wiki.

Thanks for the flowers! The plugin documentation mechanism is actually quite nice. You write your own plugin, you put it into the plugin folder of your Cura installation, you activate the plugin, you press the '?'-button on the activated plugin and an initial documentation page is automatically created for your plugin! And then you need the login which gr5 just mentioned... B)

It's right at the top of the middle column of the cathegory table on the plugin-page.